Developer sells office portion of Boca mixed-use site

An office building that’s surrounded by new development in downtown Boca Raton was just sold for $25.7 million.

The building is a mid-rise structure with 73,918 square feet of interior space, according to Palm Beach County property records. It was built in 1997 and was most recently owned by developer Ram Realty Services, which paid $45 million to acquire both the building and the 4.5-acre parcel it occupied in 2006. At the time, most of the land at 120 East Palmetto Park Road was occupied by surface parking lots.

The parcel has since become a major redevelopment site for downtown Boca Raton. Ram has sold or developed much of the original surface parking, with only 1.1 acres remaining for the original office building.

Last week, Ram re-platted the offices to separate them from the other development sites. An LLC titled Kireland Palmetto Park filed a deed Tuesday to acquire the offices, also known as the Merrill Lynch building. The recorded price was $25.7 million. Corporate records show the company is managed by Alex Kurkin, a lawyer in Aventura.

Surrounding the building is a newly constructed apartment tower to the south, and a Hyatt-branded hotel that’s currently being developed to the west.

Ram wrapped up construction on a 12-story, mixed-use building dubbed the Mark at Cityplace earlier this year. It has 208 apartments and 18,052 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. The project occupies 2.3 acres of the original parcel’s southern end. The developer also built an eight-story parking garage with 679 spaces to replace the surface parking it redeveloped. It services the apartments, retail and office portions of the project.

In March, Ram sold roughly one acre of the land to the Kolter Group, where the developer is currently building the 200-room Hyatt Place Hotel Boca Raton. The recorded price for that chunk was $5.5 million.